Telecom Industry in India – Analysis

June 11, 2017

An IBEF view on Indian telecom industry: India is currently the worldâ€™s second-largest telecommunications market and has registered strong growth in the past decade and half. The Indian mobile economy is growing rapidly and will contribute substantially to Indiaâ€™s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to report prepared by GSM Association (GSMA) in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

The liberal and reformist policies of the Government of India have been instrumental along with strong consumer demand in the rapid growth in the Indian telecom sector. The government has enabled easy market access to telecom equipment and a fair and proactive regulatory framework that has ensured availability of telecom services to consumer at affordable prices. The deregulation of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) norms has made the sector one of the fastest growing and a top five employment opportunity generator in the country.

The Indian telecom sector is expected to generate four million direct and indirect jobs over the next five years according to estimates by Randstad India. The employment opportunities are expected to be created due to combination of governmentâ€™s efforts to increase penetration in rural areas and the rapid increase in smartphone sales and rising internet usage.

International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts India to overtake US as the second-largest smartphone market globally by 2017 and to maintain high growth rate over the next few years as people switch to smartphones and gradually upgrade to 4G.

Driven by strong adoption of data consumption on handheld devices, the total mobile services market revenue in India is expected to touch US$ 37 billion in 2017, registering a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 5.2 per cent between 2014 and 2017, according to research firm IDC.

According to a report by leading research firm Market Research Store, the Indian telecommunication services market will likely grow by 10.3 per cent year-on-year to reach US$ 103.9 billion by 2020.
According to the Ericsson Mobility Report India, smartphone subscriptions in India is expected to increase four-fold to 810 million users by 2021, while the total smartphone traffic is expected to grow seventeen-fold to 4.2 Exabytes (EB) per month by 2021.

According to a study by GSMA, smartphones are expected to account for two out of every three mobile connections globally by 2020 making India the fourth largest smartphone market. India is expected to lead in the growth of smartphone adoption globally with an estimated net addition of 350 million by year 2020.## Total number of smartphone shipments in India stood at 25.8 million units in the quarter ending December 2016, and smartphone shipments during 2016 stood at 109.1 million units, up by 5.2 per cent year-on-year. Broadband services user-base in India is expected to grow to 250 million connections by 2017.

This entry was posted on June 11, 2017 at 9:46 am and is filed under Industry, Research, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.